The state quickly announced that the domestic partnership applications were available online, and jubilant gay-rights activists predicted hundreds of couples would line up on Monday morning at county offices to register.
"We're a family. We've been waiting for this for a long time," said a beaming Cathy Kravitz of Portland. She said she and her partner of 21 years will be among those registering on Monday.
The law passed by the 2007 Legislature was to take effect when the new year started, but U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman suspended it to hear testimony about a petition drive that sought to put the law before voters.
The petitions fell 96 signatures short of the 55,179 needed to refer the law to the November 2008 ballot. The petitioners claim that county clerks rejected signatures improperly.
The Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based group that advocates for Christian legal issues, said it would appeal Mosman's ruling.
Fund lawyer Austin Nimocks had argued that a signature on a petition should have the same weight as a signature on a ballot, and that elections officials should have made more of an effort to contact voters whose signatures were disqualified.
But Mosman said signatures on a petition amounted to, "a call for an election, not a substitution for an election."
Petitioners plan to start another drive to put the domestic partnership law to a referendum.
"We want to vote - we think that our signatures mean something and it was an arbitrary move by the secretary of state's office," said Carolyn Wendell, who was a chief petitioner in the lawsuit.
In 2004, about 3,000 same-sex couples were granted marriage licenses in Multnomah County, the largest county in Oregon. But Oregon voters later approved a constitutional ban on gay marriage, and the state Supreme Court nullified the marriage licenses.
Homosexuals who register as domestic partners will be able to file joint state tax returns, inherit each other's property and make medical choices on each other's behalf, along with a host of other state benefits given to married Oregonians.
Oregon becomes the ninth state to approve spousal rights in some form for homosexuals, joining Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maine, California, Washington and Hawaii. Massachusetts is the only state that allows homosexuals to marry.
